Calling Mecha Programmers, Carnage Heart EXA Is Coming To PSP On March 19

Natsume picked up Carnage Heart EXA, which turns players into a mecha engineer. Instead of piloting robots you program them. Players can also pick their robot’s armor, weapons, and customize it with different colors. And after that you throw your mecha in a Battlebots-like arena.

You can share your robot specs online and Natsume says they will open a hub for Carnage Heart EXA players to do so. Carnage Heart EXA comes out on March 19 as a $29.99 downloadable PSP game.

Unless the game turns out to be trash, $30 is perfectly reasonable. It’s $10 less than retail releases of Vita games. It’s for an old system that Sony doesn’t back up anymore with physical media anywhere outside of Japan where it is a full retail game for about 50 to 60 dollars. You could be paying Japanese prices for the game…

Andrew A

You know what games were 20 bucks less than a retail Vita game? Corpse Party: Book of Shadows and Generation of Chaos: Pandora’s Reflection.

Lester Paredes

And what does that have to do with anything? Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it’s not worth more money. Also, those games have been out for ages (for video games, at least) in Japan (released 8 months ago, June for GoC and 1 1/2 years ago for Corpse Party BoS). thus, they’ve already made their money. Anything that they get from Americans is just icing on the cake.
Also, Carnage Heart is more of a niche game than the other two. There’s already an established audience for JRPGs and Adventure games like book of Shadows. The fact that they are both anime related, helps build a bridge between the two, and fans of on or the other, could easily cross over. Carnage Heart, released in 2010, is a game about programming. If you look really hard, one day, you might find the audience that just busts a nut over such gameplay. On another note, Natsume is a smaller company and such an investment represents a considerable risk to them.
And, on another note, I find it funny that you, and everyone else, complains about the price of video games. As a purely leisure, privileged hobby, it’s one of the more expensive hobbies one can have. Hobbies used to be something developed to survive. My hobby is hunting, so I can put food on the table. My hobby is cooking, so we can eat the food you put on the table. My hobby is building, so we can eat that food you cooked on a table. My hobby is gaming, so i can complain about shit. With having to buy a new console every 5 to 7 years, games for 40 to 60 apiece every few months, Internet service provider fees, a television to use, extra controllers, memory cards (at least, for the Vita and PSP), electricity bills… Look, if you can’t afford to buy games, maybe you should stop playing them?

Andrew A

UFO Interactive is also a small company and that didn’t stop them from releasing Elminage Original for a whopping 15 dollars. Listen, I get it. You obviously have a lot of stake involved with Carnage Heart EXA. I’m guessing you work for Natsume or were involved with EXA’s localization. Just understand that most of us expect our niche downloadable games to be cheaper.

Lester Paredes

That’s because Elminage Original is a very small game. When you have a tiny team of programmers making an entire game, you don’t have to charge a lot to make up your original spending and then generate profit. And no, I don’t work in video games. I wouldn’t want a job in a field that sports such high uncertainty and turn-over. I just happen to have strong opinions about pricing and the inherit perception that just because it’s digital means it must be cheaper. Would I prefer more, less expensive game? Yes. That’s why I regularly check Steam for sales. But, do I bitch about how expensive games are when they come out? No. Why? Because I don’t need to play games to survive. I play games for fun, buying games with money i have left over after paying bills and taking care of other more important things. These are purely luxury items. As such, you will pay luxury prices for the privilege to play games.

Andrew A

You’ve been berating people who’ve been saying they’ll wait for a price drop despite the fact that you yourself regularly check steam sales apparently. Don’t you think thats a bit hypocritical? Not sure why you’re jumping down our throats.

Lester Paredes

It’s not hypocritical at all. This would be hypocritical: If I went on Steam and demanded that all of their games be $20, because they are digital and I’m not getting a box! This sucks! I’m not going to get it right away! boo-hoo!

Checking Steam for deals is about as hypocritical as going to a supermarket and checking out their weekly sales advertisement to see if anything I want/need is on sale. I’m not demanding Steam make all of their games $20 or less. I am looking at what Steam decides STEAM wants to offer me.

That is in no way, fake, phony, insincere,false, fraudulent, hollow, deceptive, spurious, specious, or duplicitous. Because all of those things are what ‘hypocritical’ actually means.

Elvick

Yeah, and PSP retail games have been $30. So…

Ceci “Ruzuzu” Kiyomizu

I saw this and was excited then the 30 dollar digital price tag.
A little over board don’t ya think?

Lester Paredes

Nope. Unless, of course, the game turns out to be crap. It’s a full retail game, the only reason it’s not coming in a box is because they’ve all but stopped making UMD’s for PSP’s. At least in America…

Elvick

Tell that to Aksys, because they’ve released one game on UMD this year already.

Lester Paredes

They are in the minority. i think Monkey Paw is going to do a physical release also for Class of Heroes 2, but other than that, they’ve all but stopped.

Elvick

I never said it was some common practice. Doesn’t change the fact not only release at retail, but price it at $30. A price that some publishers try to pass off on digital only releases of PSP games.

Which to me, is ridiculous. Either release it on UMD, or price it $20 or lower.

At least it’s not as bad as full retail price ($40) Vita games, released digital only. *looks at New Little King’s Story in NA, and EDF*

Lester Paredes

Both of those games are awesome (in my opinion) and totally worth the money. The crappy practices I have a problem with is releasing a game digitally for $0.99 on IOS, then porting it over to consoles for $14.99, and then porting it to handheld for $40. I’m looking at you, Ubisoft and your Dungeon Hunter: Alliance game! that’s a practice you should rally against, not ‘oh, this game is so expensive!’

will get the game immediately if it was $20, maybe i should wait for a while.

Lester Paredes

Yes, that makes perfect sense. Everyone wait until it’s $20. Then they’ll see no one is interested in the game and never release more like it. Of course, you could always pay Japanese prices for new, non-budget PSP games…

I’m totally up for this! But they better make this available on the vita 0-o it’s pretty standard for new PSP games but if they don’t I cant play it lol.

EmoryM

At least it’s coming out in March, so we can take advantage of that spend $50 get $10 deal on PSN! Just need to find $30 of other stuff to buy…

60hz

damn this and Farewell, Umihara Kawase news, its just too much X-P

Warboss Aohd

i’m reminded o’ Phantom Crash.

Magitek

Well I’m a bit late to the punch, but I translated CH:EZ for the PSX.
It’s not EXA but it has a few things that it doesn’t, like tactical warfare!

Search around or message me if you are interested in it.

For those of you wondering, EXA is pretty awesome, it should be well worth the $30 if you enjoy intelligent games; truly these are rare gems and you should not wait to purchase if you wish to see more of them!

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